Today’s recommendation comes from Los Angeles, CA by the band The Airborne Toxic Event, a five piece rock band which fuses rock with orchestral arrangements to produce some fist pumping anthemic songs as well as some real mellow tearjerkers and comprises of Mikel Jollett (Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards), Steven Chen (Guitar, Keyboards), Noah Harmon (Electric Bass, Upright Bass, Backing Vocals), Daren Taylor (Drums) and Anna Bulbrook (Viola, Keyboards, Tambourine, Backing Vocals).
The band started to take shape when Mikel an essayist and writer by profession then started writing songs with an acoustic guitar following an emotionally traumatic week during which he broke-up with his girlfriend, found out that his mother has been diagnosed with cancer and was himself diagnosed with a genetic autoimmune disease. Soon after he met Daren and they started rehearsing his songs, later on Anna, Noah and Steven were also brought on so that the band took its final shape.
The band has been named after a section of the famous book White Noise by Don DeLillo, with his background in fictional writing Mikel found similarities in the circumstances after which the band took its shape and the events dubbed in the novel as the “Airborne Toxic Event”, both being life altering, here’s what he said about that
“I first read the book about three years ago, and was completely blown away. It’s just so funny and sad and absurd and odd. I think the fear-of-death theme hit me. Everything in the book changed when Jack thought he was going to die; he was already obsessed, but it made him think about his life differently. I also dig the random bits of static and advertising; it’s the medium through which our stupid lives flow. It’s sort of pathetic and funny and sloppy and human.
Some of our fans get it, and those people are always very excited. Some don’t and they wonder what the hell? But the name is also kind of a big middle finger to the idea of names. Like, who cares what your name is? Let’s call ourselves this odd thing.”
The song I’m recommending All At Once, is the title track of their second album and deals with feelings of loss and perspective in life, it’s a beautifully arranged song with an anthem like high, starts off with a nice bass line sets off from there riding on the bass drum and a faster bass line with the lead also kicking in to a full on crescendo, here’s with Mikel said about the song
“I came home and in my own family, a bunch of stuff had gone down. I had a bunch of family members [who] had died - but not like from some tragic car wreck or anything, they just each were really old, like my grandparents. That kind of thing changes your perspective. I sort of locked myself in my room for, I don’t know, 3 or 4 months and just wrote and wrote and wrote. I think that when so many [people in your] family die, your perspective on life changes, and things you thought were really important turn out to not have been that important.”
Noah added,
“Maybe being cold on the tour bus is not quite as big an issue as you thought before...”
There are many good live performances of this song available, I’ll throw in a few here, don’t forget to checkout the Facebook page for more, here’s the song
If you like this song you can get it from the link below
If you’d like to know more about them here’s the link to their Wikipedia page
Here's an amazing acoustic performance
Here they are live @ Webster Theatre in Hartford, CT
Here's another acoustic performance for Radio 94.7 in Sacramento, CA
Still wanna know more about them, here’s the link to their Official Website
Enjoy!!!
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